I guess it hasn't occurred to her that she'd make even more money by allowing these books to be marketed to science fiction readers in addition to those who read her books because they're Margaret Atwood books. There are quite a few who are into dystopian fiction.
I wonder what she'd have made of the average Con-Version SF convention in Calgary. The main Guest of Honor was always an author. No actor was ever a guest at that convention, or at Noncon. The closest to "Hollywood celebrity" Con-Version ever got was J. Michael Straczynski (creator of the Babylon 5 TV series), and they raised extra money from donations to cover his expenses. Otherwise, the guests were authors, artists, editors, local (ie. Albertan) university professors of English and various science disciplines, etc. I remember one SF author saying in his GoH speech how impressed he was that the major focus of our conventions was on writing, editing, publishing, and art. He said that this was something most SF conventions didn't do anymore. The con activities included writing seminars, short story competitions, sessions where people could bring samples of their writing and have it critiqued, and so on.
When you say "novel concept" do you mean a new concept? Or do you mean a literal novel?
The first few Foundation books were never originally written as novels. They were published individually in various SF pulp magazines, and only later were they gathered up and printed in novel form. So if there are disconnects between sections, that's because the stories or sections weren't originally written to mesh together as a real novel.
Asimov was very much interested in making every last penny he could out of his stories, though, and had a talent for coming up with ways to get them into anthologies. He also had a talent for "writing to order" for other peoples' anthologies. Just about any editor could phone him up (no email in those days) or write him a letter asking for a story on a specific theme conforming to a specific length, and he could do it. Quickly.
Yes.
I can't say the second half was bad, I liked it fine, but I enjoyed the first part much more and I wished that had been the focus of the whole story. 
Mind you, I was considered weird in that school anyway for several more reasons than that. Girls didn't read "boys' books" (ie. adventure stories). And apparently nobody read science fiction, in spite of that library having an excellent selection of SF. That's where I got into Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, and Andre Norton, as well as others not so well-known today, such as Milton Lesser, Lester del Rey, and Alan E. Nourse.
